Samsung fights accusation of TV energy efficiency test rigging

Samsung has come out with a strong rebuttal against accusations of it gaming energy efficiency tests on its TVs.

The accusations echo the recent Volkswagen scandal, which revealed that millions of the company’s diesel cars were loaded with software to score better marks in emissions tests.

The alleged issue, reported on by The Guardian, states that an EU-funded research group called ComplianTV found consistently higher energy consumption rates for Samsung televisions, compared to the Korean company’s official figures.

Samsung has “firmly rejected” The Guardian’s article however, by stating that its ‘motion lighting feature’ (which reduces power consumption by dimming the screen brightness), is a standard out-of-the-box feature.

Samsung argues that this feature is not just limited to testing scenarios, but that customers can turn it off by swapping from the Standard viewing mode, which will then result in higher energy consumption.

Rudolf Heinz, project manager of ComplianTV’s product lab, told The Guardian that “Samsung is meeting the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law”, implying that while not illegal, there should be greater transparency with the rating’s and specific modes used in future.

More testing is planned to see whether other manufacturer’s TVs have similar mode-dependant consumption rates, so watch this space.